WordPress powers 1 in 4 websites today. This statistic is even more impressive considering the rapid adoption of content management systems (CMSs). The percentage of sites on WordPress has doubled in the past 5 years, from 13% in January 2011 to 26% in February 2016.

Not only is WordPress popular, no other CMS even comes close to being used as widely. The combined percentage of sites on Joomla and Drupal, the 2nd and 3rd most popular CMSs, total only 5% of all sites compared with WordPress’s 26%. Out of all sites built on a CMS, WordPress holds an almost 60% market share, while Joomla represents 6.3% and Drupal represents 4.9%.

WordPress’s overwhelming popularity is no accident. There are some very good reasons why we and many other people are WordPress fans:

FreeWordPress is an open-source content management system, which means no licensing fees are charged.

Well-SupportedA large, worldwide community of developers and users support WordPress and continually contribute to improving the interface and features. Also, since there are so many WordPress experts around the world, you are not locked into working with whomever originally designed and built the WordPress site.

Easy to UseWordPress is incredibly easy to use. It has an intuitive interface for site management without any programming experience. You can add, modify, and remove pages and content (text, pictures, files) throughout the site. You have the ability to save draft posts, preview posts, and schedule post publishing. Your work is automatically saved as a draft as you type.

Flexible & CustomizableWe highly value WordPress’s unlimited, creative design flexibility because we custom-design and program all the websites we create. If we can dream it, we can build it. We can also customize the back-end administration for ease-of-use.

ExtendableWordPress has a substantial library of plugins that enable us to quickly and cost-effectively add website functionality such as eCommerce, Google Analytics, social media auto-posting, event registration, and more. Some plugins are better than others and we advise only implementing those that are well-supported, highly-rated, and widely-adopted. Another optional, useful feature is the ability to create a network of websites for multiple blogs via WordPress Multisite with a network-wide admin panel for updating all sites.

Multimedia-FriendlyVideos, images, audio files, and various types of documents (PDFs, PPTs, etc.) can be easily added to any page of a WordPress site. It also supports the embedding of YouTube videos, Instagram posts, tweets, and Google maps.

Search Engine FriendlySearch engines like WordPress because of its hierarchical structure and automatically-generated, user-friendly URLs which allow for easy site indexing. There are also many do-it-yourself SEO plugins for title tag rewrites, meta descriptions, etc.

SecureWordPress takes security very seriously. Since the release of version 3.7, WordPress includes automatic security updates to keep sites secure. Otherwise, following other common-sense security precautions such as keeping plugins up to date and using strong passwords will minimize security vulnerabilities. Sites should have automatic scheduled backups. If desired, further precautions can be taken to harden WordPress, such as setting up two-step authentication log-ins and firewalls.

It is worth noting that WordPress is used and trusted by numerous big-name companies, including The New York Times, Bloomberg, TIME, CNN, and Walt Disney, among many others. See the WordPress showcase for more featured sites built on the WordPress platform.